Like Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance, Crime Life: Gang Wars and 25 to Life, Final Fight: Streetwise tries for a realistic, gritty urban look and fails to create anything visually interesting. Colors in the environments range from brown to gray to more brown. Everything looks washed out much more so on PS2 than Xbox, each environment is sparse to a NyQuil-like degree, character models animate well but there's far too little variation in enemy models. Though a few enemies stand out as unique, you'll often fight five or six of the exact same model type at once.

The sound is definitely one of the best parts of the game, specifically the score. Songs from the Dub Pistols, Slipknot and MF Doom help round out a diverse set of listings which will keep your ears awake even though the rest of you may fall asleep. Voice acting isn't great, but isn't terrible either. Despite its adequacy, it suffers from the same kind of overzealous swearing that drains the authenticity from the dialogue like so many of this genre's ilk. The sound effects for punches and weapon fire range from generic to forgettable. The snippets of character dialogue during fights could have benefited from a larger pool of options.

There's no reason to come back if you can make it through once. You can eventually access a version of the original Final Fight as well as a few music videos from Shadows Fall and Fear Factory. Are these enough to warrant a purchase of the game? Not really, unless you're the biggest Final Fight fan ever. It was also interesting to note that some of the original's environments had livelier, more diverse detail than Streetwise. One last thing, if you for some reason do decide to purchase this title, remember to quit your game before turning off your console; it's the only way to save.

Final Fight: Streetwise

Help Kyle, brother of FINAL FIGHT's Cody, take down muggers, stop drug deals, and accomplish other goals in FINAL FIGHT: STREETWISE.

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The Verdict

If you're a sucker for beat-em-ups, you might be able to enjoy this one, though probably not. The fighting system itself has a few interesting features, but almost everything else about the game will either frustrate or annoy. The camera, the enemy A.I., almost every aspect of the graphics, the sound effects and the required mini-games are all decidedly sub-par. So while a decent fighting system may exist and even be easier to use than on Xbox, it's lost in the myriad of flaws this game possesses. In the end, Streetwise is an update where to play is to suffer.